Author: Tracee de Hahn

February 14th already? What happened to January? From all of the Miss Demeanors….. we hope your year is going well, filled with lots of reading and/or writing.

 Recently I spent some time in Bath in the United Kingdom (while I was there the ‘United’ part of the Kingdom felt a bit splintery, but that’s another story). Bath is the land of Jane Austen. At least that’s what we are made to feel and believe.  To the hapless traveler it might seem that Bath was the setting of the entirety of Austen’s life and all of her books. She is present in the hearts and minds of the people there, as the saying goes, and is somehow omnipresent in the town. The highlights of Austen’s world to today’s traveler remain the Pump Room (where tea is a delight), the Baths (which my Bathonian friends remember swimming in as children….. I suppose that ‘back then’ no one cared that the exposure to the open sky grew algae and turned the water green), and the Jane Austen museum.  I loved Bath. The town, the people, the atmosphere. However I did wonder about pilgrimages to places where authors have written their great works. Do you understand Austen or her books better after visiting the places she walked, and the places which inspired her?  A terrible confession. While I was there, and in the midst of enjoying my trip, I thought No, this doesn’t add to my reading of her books. There were certainly interesting tidbits about her life presented at the museum, but I am also a student of history and those would have been interesting regardless of the specificities of their connection to the famous author. A worse confession. Now that’s I’m home and have a little literal and figurative distance I’ve changed my attitude. I think it comes down to this. When I read I love the images the author creates in my mind. Is it exactly what the author saw No, after all, do we all see the same shade of blue? When I was in Bath I felt that I was in the middle of a scheme to make me see Austen’s shade of blue. “This is how….” the buildings looked, the streetscape felt, the clothing blew in the wind. Now that I’m home, the memory of those places and experiences fade into my own  inner landscape and I’m sure that the next time I read one of  Austin’s books I will unwittingly incorporate parts of her (real) landscape into my internal one. That ,I’m okay with.  I still want to visit where Tolstoy lived and wrote and this fact gave me pause while in the UK. Why, when I wasn’t certain about walking in the footsteps of Austen while in Bath? To me, visiting Tolstoy’s estate is where he was formed. It is not at all a visit to the scene of his books – there is no Napoleonic battle in the distance, or meeting of the Moscow Masons, or music of a Petersburg ballroom. It is a chance to meet the man, not his books as written. Bath blurred that line. It is where Austin lived for some time and where she visited periodically but in the main it is presented as where parts of her books are set. Fiction and reality coming face to face!End result, I’m going to fit an Austen book into my reading schedule sometime soon, and I’m getting ready to bite into a very traditional English scone for breakfast, complete with tea straight from the shops of London, so I’ve clearly been swept up into the Austonian fervor. I suppose I should simply enjoy. (And perhaps start planning my next trip, this time with book in hand, ready to wallow in the atmosphere, while reading…. maybe Sense and Sensibility?) Or perhaps I will take this newest edition of Pride and Prejudice along. Text, Jane Austen, accompanying recipes, Martha Stewart.  

I recently returned from a trip across the Atlantic on the only true ocean liner sailing today, Cunard’s Queen Mary 2. The trip from Southampton to New York was nothing short of magical, however (isn’t there always a however?) we did pass through strong storms for a good portion of the voyage. I am prone to exaggerate for the sake of a good tale, but even the captain declared them strong and the Beaufort scale set the winds at Force 11, violent storms. That’s proof enough for me!  While crossing I came across three other Cunard passengers of historical interest. Each was a literary luminary of his era and each had a slightly different view of the crossing. During my trip, I had moments of agreeing with all three although I had no complaints with the ship, which was glorious, they’ve come a long way since poor Charles Dickens suffered. “She stops,” wrote Dickens about his crossing, “and staggers and shivers as though stunned and then, with a violent throbbing in her heart darts forward like a monster goaded into madness, to be beaten down and battered, and crushed and leaped on by that angry sea.” He spent ten days of his 1842 Atlantic crossing on the Britannia in a seasick coma. This was his first experience of the new steamship and after a journey fraught with seasickness, hallucinations, and a constant terror of fire, he decided to return by the more traditional sailing ship.  He declared that his cabin had a bed resembling a “muffin beaten flat,” with pillows “no thicker than crumpets” and the mattress “spread like a surgical plaster on a most inaccessible shelf.”  His second trip to the United States was in 1867 on the Russia. Although a pleasanter crossing than his first, he did declare his fellow passengers “Jackasses.”   Henry James had a very different memory of his time on the Servia in 1883. “She was slow, but she was spacious and comfortable and there was a kind of motherly decency in her long, nursing rock and her rustling old fashioned gait. It was as if she wished not to present herself in port with the splashed eagerness of a young creature. I had never liked the sea so much before, indeed I have never liked it at all, but now I had a revelation of how, in a midsummer mood, it could please. It was darkly and magnificently blue and imperturbably quiet – save for the great regular swell of its heartbeats, the pulse of its life and there grew to be something agreeable in the sense of floating there in infinite isolation and leisure that it was a positive satisfaction that the ship was not a racer.”  Mark Twain was an experienced sailor having served as a Mississippi riverboat pilot. After traveling as a passenger on the Batavia in 1872 he wrote to the Royal Humane Society to commend the captain and crew in rescuing survivors from a shipwreck.  “Our boat had a hard fight, for the waves and wind beat it constantly back. I do not know when anything has alternatively so stirred me through and through and then disheartened me, as it did to see the [other, wrecked] boat every little while, get almost close enough, and then be hurled three lengths away again by a prodigious wave, and the darkness settling down all the time.” On my voyage last week, as we crossed the Atlantic the captain announced the moment we passed within fifty or so nautical miles of the place where the Titanic struck an iceberg.  This was a moment to remember the role of Cunard’s Carpathia in rescuing the survivors of that terrible tragedy.  I set foot on shore in New York delighted to have crossed in such a fashion, but didn’t have the courage to pass through customs and immigration with words first said by Oscar Wilde upon arrival in New York 1882: “I have nothing to declare but my genius.”  

 TRACEE: The third in the Detective Byron Mysteries, Beyond the Truth, released October 30th, so first off, Congratulations.  BRUCE: Thanks so much! And for the invitation to guest on your site. TRACEE: Anyone who reads the John Byron series knows that they are classified within mystery as police procedural, and as a former law enforcement officer you are known for “getting it right.” I remember chatting with you at the Malice Domestic conference a few years ago when you were debating the theme for your next book. What struck me in our conversation was your complete focus on John Byron’s emotional trajectory. Is his story always central to how you approach the book?  BRUCE: Yes. When reading a series I really get attached to the characters. In creating the Detective Byron mystery series I sought to create a character whose past was integral to who he is as a person. I wanted a character who fights constantly against his demons, while striving to become a better person. I knew where I wanted John Byron to be by the third novel even as I wrote the first. Byron’s development will remain central to every book in this series. TRACEE: Writing fiction is inventing things that sound believable enough to draw the reader into the story. Authors who arrive at any form of crime fiction without a law enforcement background check and double check details to get them right, aiming to sprinkle in enough to paint a scene accurately. Your perspective is the opposite. The details of the law enforcement side to crime solving is second nature to you. What are your dilemmas in terms of painting the scene or creating characters to keep the story in balance with your wealth of technical knowledge and experience?  BRUCE: I think the most difficult part for me is the temptation to give the reader too much detail. While I do want to make each investigation as realistic as possible, I don’t want to bore or overload the reader with details that they don’t require. As with most storytelling, it becomes a balancing act. I also strive to give the reader the emotional aspect of the job. Whether we show it or not, every cop feels and carries the weight of these cases with them, even after we’ve retired. TRACEE: I’ve heard you speak about creating John Byron and making him real. He has struggles in his personal life and at work. In that context, you’ve said you are aware of balancing the trust of the colleagues you’ve worked with for decades in terms of painting a dark hero while at the same time you don’t want to sugar coat the realities of the burdens of their service. Could you talk a bit about that balance and how it impacts John and the problems he faces, and solves? BRUCE: I am often asked what my former colleagues think of my novels, the underlying question is whether or not they are bothered by anything negative that my police characters do. I think most people are surprised to learn that the police community as a whole is very supportive of the Byron series. The reality is that police officers are the same as everyone else. We have fears, weaknesses, biases, personal problems, things we do very well, and things we don’t. The job police officers are asked to perform can be extremely difficult at times, and the vast majority of cops do it very well. John Byron represents the best and the worst of policing. He is a diligent investigator who cares not only about justice but also his detectives. Where he falters is in his personal life. John’s demons are the demons commonly found amount veteran cops, firefighters, EMS workers, military personal, anyone who deals with life or death trauma on a daily basis. Maintaining a healthy marriage, a healthy lifestyle, and a healthy mind becomes harder as the years pass. Stress can manifest itself in many unhealthy ways until finally a choice must be made. I am taking John Byron on a journey, and hopefully, if I do it right, I take the reader along too.   TRACEE: I’m not surprised that law enforcement is supportive. I think you aim for reality, not expose and anyone in a tough job knows that reality isn’t perfect.  Before we close out, could you pull back the curtain and share a little about your writing process?    BRUCE: My writing process is similar to every other creative endeavor. I constantly live with the current novel in my head. Whether I’m sitting down and typing or not, the story is constantly playing in the background. I work out plot points and character issues every moment I’m awake. I believe that is the key to writing a good novel. Much like an actor may insert themselves into a character for a year or more (see Daniel Day Lewis) I think writing novels requires that same discipline. As the story becomes more solid in my head, so too will it become real on the page. TRACEE: Maybe I should have interviewed your wife. Does she wonder if you are Bruce or John at different points in the day? At least Daniel Day-Lewis was probably on set for only a few weeks or months. As you mention, we writers are in the head of the character all the time.  Thanks for joining me today Bruce, especially since you’ve been dealing with some flooding issues at home. In fact, I envision the waters rising right now. I hope everyone else is enjoying Fall weather and looking for a great book to spend the day with. Might we suggest  Beyond the Truth?  For more about Bruce: www.brucerobertcoffin.comAnd a direct link to purchase the latest in the series.